


watching you watching me (we're all a little creepy)

by orphan_account



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Fluff, Humour, M/M, moving in, summer pornathon bonus challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1986942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Morgana is Gwen's Goddess (and neighbour), Gwen is a (stealthy) creeper, and Merlin is (unsurprisingly) useless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	watching you watching me (we're all a little creepy)

**Author's Note:**

> Little drabbly thing I wrote for the first bonus challenge of summerpornathon; I ended up actually liking it! Finally a Morgwen fic that is an actual story and not just a drabble-y thing :)! I was trying my hand at humour (and fluff. Fluff! What is the world coming to?), and Gwen insisted on being tragically talkative (inside her own head).

Summer 2009, someone moved in.

Gwen didn’t know it was the flat to her right that was vacated. The first hint she had that someone new was moving in was seeing the huge van parked outside the building Friday morning; the second hint came when she was down at old lady Mary’s bringing the woman a plate of the almond cookies she’d just baked. Old Mary leaned in and whispered, as if sharing a secret, “The landlord threw that Luke lad out, and...”

Of course Gwen knew that _Luke lad_ ; he’d been her neighbour. A creepy neighbour, or creep extraordinaire, as Merlin always called him. He always spied on Gwen whenever she was out on her balcony reading a book, chatting on the phone, or just trying to get a tan. Being alone in the lift with him (and Gwen was uncannily frequently alone in a lift with him) was an exercise in patience, because there was only so much staring and spying a healthy human being could take without snapping.

Gwen celebrated this absence of creepiness by bathing in the sun for an unhealthily long time, and Merlin told her to back off when she’d sent the thirteenth text of caps lock and an abundance of exclamation marks (“NONCREEPERS CLAIM THEIR FREE COUNTRY BACK!!!!!”) while increasingly inebriated at ten in the morning. She thought she could do some more of that, have wine and a candle in the evenings where it wouldn’t feel like someone was breathing down her neck, at least until the new neighbour would move in—this utter, absolute absence of creepiness was a wonderful, wonderful thing.

So when, one Saturday morning, Gwen stumbled out onto the balcony with a toothbrush stuck in her mouth to water the plants (because, yes, her wake-up alarm reminded her to water the plants too, or else the green things would die; Gwen’s mind was a sieve of high quality), she’d never thought she would turn into a creep herself.

The problem was that her new neighbour was a woman. A Goddess of a woman, really: a slim, pale beauty with flowing dark hair and a _sinuous_ mouth. Gwen promptly proceeded to lose her toothbrush, because, _woah_ , giving the Goddess an accidental peek of her boobs as she bent down to retrieve it (because Gwen believed in bra-less sleeping), flushing fiercely while the woman just stared and stared, and Gwen tried to save herself by covering most of her Simpsons nightgown with flailing hands, babbling apologies and “ohmygodSORRY”—

and that just made the woman break out of her stare and laugh; a wild, loud, happy thing. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted to the side, and the movement showed her strong, bare neck.

And Gwen had one thought: _oh, no. Oh fuck, NO. I will totally creep on you._

*

To be fair, she was a stealthy creeper. She did none of that Luke business, staring and staring and staring a hole into the side of the person’s head until the person was twitching from discomfort. No, she did it stealthily—she stared holes into the side of people’s heads when they didn’t notice.

She watched her neighbour surreptitiously from her window and figured out that the woman—Morgana, and what a beautiful name for such a beautiful creature—liked to drink her coffee out on the balcony in the mornings, when there was still a cool breeze. Morgana never took the lift, trying to stay in shape, and that was just an utter disappointment; it was one possibility less to stare at the woman in an accidental meet-up without glass in front of her vision. Morgana liked to read out on the balcony too, every second evening, always some textbook or other. She had loud phone calls on the balcony, painted her toe nails or simply relaxed, and Gwen would watch her all the while, her own absence on the balcony compensated easily by being able to watch Morgana.

Well, she _could_ go back out on the balcony. She could say she liked to take her tea outside in the mornings too, once or twice a week, and what a _coincidence_ that they should be out there the same time. Except that would be a lie, and Gwen was a horrible at lying, she couldn’t lie, and what was even worse was that then she would be in danger of becoming an actual creeper instead of a stealthy one, because she knew once she was out there the first, second, or third time, and got to look at Morgana for real and not through glass, she wouldn’t be able to stop, so then she would really be out there all the time and in the end she would be forced to talk to Morgana, and while doing that she would fall harder for the woman than that time she’d tripped down Lance’s stairs, and she couldn’t talk to her anyway because she would flush and somehow manage to lose her toothbrush again even if she didn’t actually _have_ a toothbrush with her at that point in time because it would be so horrible that it would just somehow happen, she would conjure a toothbrush out of thin air, and—

“God, just _talk_ to her,” Merlin said when she unleashed all that word-vomit on him via phone. “It can’t be that hard.”

“You spilled your drink on Arthur the first time you talked to him,” Gwen felt the need to point out, slightly stung by the fact that Merlin lacked the appropriate empathy. “And then you tried to clean him up and ended up spilling his drink over yourself in the process.”

There was a conspicuous silence from the other side of the line.

“Just talk to her,” Merlin repeated.

Merlin was useless.

She went back to her creeping.

*

Summer 2010, nobody moved in, and nobody moved out.

Morgana still lived next to her, and Gwen still hadn't exchanged a word with her. She had been right; Morgana _was_ ridiculously kind (she was lady Mary's second favourite, always brought her some of the soup she made every Wednesday--but second favourite _only after you, Gwennie_ ), though she could be cutting and colder than an arctic wind, if she set her mind to it. Not that Gwen really knew of Morgana's temper other than from the loud phone calls she tended to have, because every time Morgana saw her, she would just smile widely while blushing, nod her head in greeting, and walk past.

Morgana, in turn, had tried to engage Gwen in conversations before, at the postboxes down in the lobby, or when they'd stumbled over one another as they were simultaneously on the way down to lady Mary, or when they accidentally met each other on the balcony--but, always, each and every single time, Gwen would be struck by a vicious tug of heat in her stomach, she would flush and her hands would begin to shake, her palms would dampen, and then she would think, _nothing is more beautiful than when I watch you watch the moon from my window_ , and she knew that if she opened her mouth then she would _say it_ , and that would just creep Morgana out, completely, utterly, absolutely, and Gwen was in no way ready to let go of her crush, even though it was an unfortunate one, because she'd never believed that she could feel this way, after Lance.

But she did, and it was glorious and horrible both, and Merlin was seriously going to dump her on her arse if she continued talking about Morgana on their nights out just once more.

"--but she's so wonderful," Gwen said, when they were at their usual hangout, four pints into the night. "And I'm, well, I'm me, and if I talk to her then that will be it, because she'll realise I'm a nutter, and I don't want that; I'd rather stare at her for the rest of my life than have her look at me funny."

"Well, you'll just have to talk to her sometime if you want this to go somewhere, you know," Merlin said, who had it easy; who had it easy, because he was a nutter like Gwen was a nutter, but he was of the loveable and endearing kind rather than Gwen, who was strange and awkward, and Gwen was sure that there was no one for her around like Arthur was for Merlin.

"Easy for you to say," Gwen said, and did not proceed to sulk as she ordered her fifth pint.

That fifth pint was clearly a bad idea, because then things went downhill.

In the best way possible.

Merlin announced Arthur would finally turn up with his long-lost sister soon--a ridiculous story of a horribly medieval-like family-feud gone wrong; they'd all heard of this mysterious sister for over one and a half years now, but still no one'd met her--and when Arthur did, two hours later, it was with Morgana in tow.

Morgana, her glorious, gorgeous, Goddess of a neighbour.

Under the influence of alcohol, Gwen liked to compare herself to a mess of loose screws, because she never, ever knew when to shut up. Well, she didn't know that when she was sober, either, but usually when sober she kept her mental vomit inside her own head whereas when shitfaced it would just all spew out of her mouth _like that_ , without her control, without her volition, the worst case of Foot in Mouth Syndrome that could ever possibly be diagnosed in the history of mankind (bar Merlin perhaps), and it was just horrible, that Morgana was here, well, not horrible as in horribly horrible but wonderfully horrible because Morgana was--

"Well, I am flattered," Morgana was saying, _into her face_ , "that you think it's wonderfully horrible that I am here."

"I am--oh, God, did I--am I speaking? Am I speaking out loud?"

"Yes, and quite loudly, too," Morgana said again, _speaking to her_. "And while it is really adorable, I wish you would also speak to me when you're not three sheets to the wind."

"As in--as in, when I'm sober?" Gwen had to ask, had to clarify. This could not possibly be.

"Yes. As in, when you're sober."

And that was just the best thing that had ever happened to her, Gwen decided there and then, Morgana wanting to speak to her when she was sober.

Apparently she said as much, too, because Morgana gave her a wide grin and a _kiss on the cheek_ , and when she asked Gwen then to promise her that she would indeed speak to her without liquid courage, Gwen was so out of it that she actually did promise that.

*

Hangovers were the kind of hell reserved especially for idiots who kept being lured in by the heavenly call of booze again and again, and Gwen felt like a cow had chewed on her, vomited her back out only to eat her again, that next morning. The sun was pale in the sky when she stumbled out onto her balcony still half-dazed, her hair a shock of unruly curls around her head. She needed some air, and so she took it, breathing in deep and calm, eyes closed.

"Awake then, my stealthy little stalker?" someone asked from her right, and Gwen jerked together something _bad_. That voice. She knew that voice. Oh, God.

"My..." She took a last, deep breath, and then clenched her hands on the balustrade and was _brave_. She turned around, horrible as she looked then in her tank top and shorts and bloodshot eyes, and faced Morgana. "My stealthy little stalker?"

God. She didn't want to know, did she.

Morgana deemed she needed to know.

"Oh, yes," she began, cheerful. "You told me all you did last summer. And winter, too. Though I already knew that; after all I was watching you right back."

Her eyes were bright, and her mouth was curled. She was beautiful, without her makeup, face clean and pale and young and strangely open. She was never more beautiful than then, and Gwen asked both hurriedly and hesitantly, "You... you were?"

The grin on Morgana's face turned unbearably, unbearably soft. "Of course I was," she said, softly, and took a step closer.

Really, there was nothing Gwen could do but step closer too.

*

Summer 2011, Morgana moved a flat to the left.

It was pretty much the best summer ever.


End file.
